Yesterday, the EPA released a Mercury and Air Toxics Standards proposal -- the first to recommend national limits on mercury, arsenic, chromium, nickel, and acid gasses emitted from coal and oil-powered plants.

By enacting this plan and regulating these toxics, the EPA estimates the plan will will prevent as many as 17,000 premature deaths and 11,000 heart attacks a year, as well as prevent 120,000 cases of childhood asthma symptoms and about 11,000 fewer cases of acute bronchitis among children each year. It's one of the largest steps forward in protecting kids from toxic air pollution in a generation.

When was the first time you realized you were part of something bigger and had the power to create change?

I realized it 8 years ago in March 2003 when our government invaded Iraq. Sickened by the lies and violence I knew I had to do something. So I started organizing my fellow students at the University of Kansas, holding demonstrations, debates, and teach-ins. But despite my best efforts I alone couldn't end the war so I vowed to prevent the next one and keep us from sending our nation's youth into harms way to defend our dangerous addiction to fossil fuels.

As we gear up for Power Shift 2011, a lot of things are going on. Next month, 10,000 young environmental activists will come to DC to make their voices heard, learn about environmental organizing, and make change happen. Yesterday, a group of young Ohioans, Sierra Club organizers, and Ohio's Energy Action Coalition got the ball rolling on this power shift.

The group convened in front of Speaker John Boehner's field office in Cincinnati, OH, to protest Boehner's support of anti-EPA legislation. In 2009, the EPA issued a finding declaring that six key greenhouse gases are dangerous for our public health. The republican-proposed legislation would strip the EPAs ability to regulate these greenhouse gases as outlined in the Clean Air Act.

Katie McChesney, the Ohio representative for the Energy Action Coalition, said, "Protecting the Clean Air Act is an essential way of protecting the healthy of children and families in Ohio and across the country. We hope that Congressman Boehner will listen to the call of young people in Ohio and put our interests before those of corporate polluters."

A months long smear campaign on the EPA will come to a head this week, as House Energy Chairman Fred Upton moves forward with a vote today on his bill stripping the EPA of its authority to regulate carbon pollution. The Energy and Commerce Committee is debating Upton's proposal today beginning at 10am: watch live.

This vote is only part of the Big Oil’s assault on the EPA. The proposed budget - the one looking to cut everything except fossil fuel subsidies - would cut the agency’s budget by a third, according to Mother Jones. It also includes a host of riders meant to “…block the agency from issuing regulations on particulate pollution, emissions from cement plants, and emissions of mercury, arsenic, and other toxic pollutants from coal-fired power plants. The riders would also restrict oversight of mountaintop-removal coal mining, block pending regulations on coal-ash disposal, and bar the EPA from moving forward with its plan to clean up the Chesapeake Bay and other national waterways.”

The movement for a clean and just energy future has many heroes, but few have been as tenacious and unyielding as Lisa Jackson has been in her mission to improve public health, advance environmental justice, and bring science back to the Environmental Protection Agency.

At Power Shift ‘09, she spoke to us as the first African American Administrator of the EPA – newly appointed by the first African American President – whose election, she told us, “changed the face of environmentalism.” After years of an EPA co-opted by polluters, Administrator Jackson promised us an EPA that would fight for us: “EPA, my friends, is back on the job… Science has been resurrected and it will guide our actions every single day.”